Setting the property of a managed bean

Question

Hello,
I have just started working on a project that I would like to use Java server Faces. I am very new to JSF so please forgive the question if it is too obvious.
We are doing a login form with a username, password and key. The key is an image that contains randomly generated characters that the user needs to type in what is in it to verify that it is a human and not an automated system trying to log in.
So my loginForm managed bean contains four properties (get/set) username, password, key, userkey (this is what the user types in and needs to equal key for the login to work).
The user will enter in (using <h:inputText />) the username, password and userkey but I need to know how to set the key to the randommly generated characters that I used to create the image with.
I know I can use <h:inputHidden /> to set the value but that would defeat the purpose because an automated system could read the page an know what the image contains (because the value would be in the HTML code sent to the browser).
The random characters and the image is generated in a servlet and the key is set in a session variable.
How can I take that session variable that contains the key (characters randommly generated) and put it in my managed bean so I can verify that the user entered the correct information?
I have been searching on Google all morning. I probably do not know what to put in for the search to get the correct information out.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Jon

Answer 1

Since your key is already in a session variable, you don't really need to make it a property of your managed bean, but just access it directly. For example, you could have a property called "keyCorrect" with a getter something like this:
public boolean isKeyCorrect()
    String key = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getSessionMap().get("key");
    return getUserKey().equals(key);
}